SAP Bids To Connect 'Inner Core' Of Business To Internet Of Things

German software company
SAP has updated its principal product SAP HANA with new capabilities including extensions to connect to the Internet of Things (IoT) and manage the big data resulting from it. In simple terms, SAP is trying to connect the commercial rationale and operational core of any business to that area of data where the IoT starts to be generated and live.

The stylishly named Service Pack 10 for SAP HANA (SPS10) is intended to extend a firm’s central business functionalities out to the edge of the network with a new remote data synchronization feature. In other words, SAP is bidding to connect a firm’s original IP and commercial proposition (basically, what it sells and how it works) to that area of technology management where remote business transactions and events (such as IoT data events) actually occur.

Our inevitable economic digitization

“SAP HANA gives customers one integrated platform for transactional and analytic workloads,” claims Quentin Clark, chief technology officer, SAP. “The new capabilities of SAP HANA ensure datacenter-readiness, synchronization of data [for connection] to any remote system and the power to extend high availability and disaster recovery of enterprise data to perform advanced analytics. We are readying our customers for the inevitable digitization of our entire economy.”

Is this an important time for SAP to push for deeper IoT connections at enterprise scale? Well yes, obviously it is. We know that the IoT is here; many of us have web-connected smart home heating systems, wearable Fitbit-style health trackers and increasingly digital automobiles.

A recent Progress (Software) and Harbor Research survey suggests that primary markets for developers in this space will shift over the next three to five years. Technologists expect healthcare (14%), smart city (13%) and automotive (12%) as the top three industries for IoT app development and revenue generation next. Previously sluggish public sector IoT implementation also rises to match today’s popular wearables market (both 8%).

IoT from retailing to ships

According to SAP we can say that now, enterprise data can be captured accessed and fed back into SAP HANA from remote workplaces such as retail stores and restaurants. In addition, firms using this technology can collect and analyze IoT data for performing critical tasks at distant locations including predictive maintenance on ships, pumping stations and in mines with low bandwidth or intermittent connections or even while offline.

With this ‘inevitable’ growth in mind, developers can now build IoT and data-intensive mobile apps that use SAP HANA remote data synchronization between the enterprise and remote locations via the SAP SQL Anywhere suite – an enterprise-ready embeddable database technology.

How long do we keep hold of IoT data?

Not long or not at all, usually. But we may start to hold on to it a little longer in future. It’s not a question openly asked too much, but SAP has built a consideration for this factor; IT teams can use new rules-based data movement among multiple storage tiers based on business requirements. As an example, organizations can set up rules to keep one year of data in memory and set a rule to move older data to disk storage or Hadoop.

SAP: We like to use images of complex structural engineering to show that we make software with inter-connectivity and strength, we also like blue and gold things to match our logo where possible (image SAP)

Related to this news we also see that SAP has released a the 2.2 version of SAP Predictive Analytics software to provide predictive insights on what it calls ‘ultra-wide datasets’ to help make fast (and accurate) predictions in real time.

“With the expanded data processing capabilities in SAP HANA SPS10, businesses can accelerate the development of powerful applications with advanced analytics. SAP HANA text mining now extends to the SQL syntax, making it easier for developers to build next-generation applications. The new spatial processing enhancements of SAP HANA include support multidimensional objects and spatial expressions in SAP HANA models or SQLScript. As a result, developers can incorporate engaging visualizations in their business applications,” said SAP, in a press statement.

Vorsprung durch SAP HANA Technik?

SAP has been criticized in the past for a) the comparatively slow uptake of HANA b) the reinvention of its own business model to quite suddenly ‘get’ cloud, developers and big data analytics (it used to ‘just’ be a kind of ERP firm, remember? c) the complexity and prohibitive cost of HANA and d) the interplay that the firm presents with previously acquired software products from the likes of Sybase, Business Objects and others – so it’s not always cake and ice cream for everyone on the HANA team. That being said, the firm’s German efficiency still shines through for many and HANA is now said to be sporting more than 6,400 customers, almost doubling from only one year ago.

Things (and Internet of Things) inside the SAP HANA ‘platform’ look positively interesting if not always interestingly positive, this is a growing space.

I am a technology journalist with over two decades of press experience. Primarily I work as a news analysis writer dedicated to a software application development ‘beat’; but, in a fluid media world, I am also an analyst, technology evangelist and content consultant. As the ...